


Little Talks

by Leonawriter



Series: Sombre Morrow verse [4]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Loss, with a guest appearance from Cloud's Bad Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 05:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14993774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: It's been several months since Genesis' disappearance, and no matter how much Cloud believes that he isn't truly gone, it sometimes seems as though he's still seeing ghosts everywhere.





	Little Talks

**Author's Note:**

> It's best if you read this after chapter seven of "To Change A Sombre Morrow" if you're planning on reading that, as that chapter gives this fic a lot of specific context.
> 
> This also refers slightly to 'Hey, Look At Us Now', yet that fic is not necessary to understand this one.

Fenrir rumbled to a halt outside of Seventh Heaven, and he smiled as he saw Denzel rush out to meet him. The latest delivery had taken him all the way out to Rocket Town, so he'd been away for a couple of weeks.

It was good to be home.

 _Home_... at one point he hadn't really thought of the bar as such, not really. But then, he'd been held back by his own feelings of inadequacy. It became easier, after - once he wasn't dying anymore, once Aerith and Zack had helped him move on, once he wasn't seeing kids dying in the streets.

Having someone else around who'd somehow been able to understand him despite their differences had probably helped. 

 _I understand him better because I can fly. Birds understand Clouds on an intuitive level, after all,_ Genesis had once said. He'd rolled his eyes at it at the time, but they'd definitely had something all right.

Tifa came up to the door, dishcloth still in hand, questions in her eyes. 

He shakes his head quietly, so as to not bring down the kids' excitement at his return with the realisation that they were still down one person.

 _Is this what it was like for them,_ he thought as he followed her and Denzel inside,  _when I was always away, when I stayed in Aerith's church instead of here, not telling anyone?_

The constant sense of waiting. The constant worry-

No, not worry. Genesis could look after himself. There hadn't been another major attack in ages. Months, even. And he'd shown he was plenty capable of handling things when it came to anything less, too.

"He still isn't back yet, is he," Tifa says later with a sigh. Once the kids are occupied again. 

Cloud shakes his head, and his eyes wander over to the photo behind the bar that'd been taken just a bare few days before the last time they'd seen him. Laughing, and surrounded by friends... by  _family._

"He could be anywhere," Cloud says stubbornly. "He can fly, after all."

As if they haven't had this conversation before. As if he hasn't had it with Yuffie, with Cid, with Vincent, with Nanaki... and always going along the same lines.

"He'd have to come down sooner or later."

He knows that.

"He's not gone, though," he says, and it's something he  _knows_ , in the same way that he knows, and has for some time now, that Sephiroth  _is_ gone. But it comes out as a mumble aimed at the wall, because Tifa's looking at him like  _that_ again, the same way she had when he'd been so preoccupied by Aerith's absence in their lives that he'd forgotten to live in the present as well.

He leaves again before it gets too late, driving slowly through the streets until he reaches an unassuming road in a residential area. He still has the key, just like he has ever since he helped move everything in.

It's cold, in the flat. Only half lived in. Cloud turns on the lights, the click of the switches becoming loud in the oppressive silence of the apartment, just like the rush of water into the jug to make sure that the plants at the window won't completely wilt.

Rapier, as well as that infamous coat of his, those were both gone, as they had been the past several times Cloud had taken refuge here. The piles of books, the old editions of LOVELESS including one Shinra Library edition, however, were still there.

Cloud leans First Tsurugi up against the wall like he always had, and settles himself onto the sofa, closing his eyes and imagining for a moment that in a minute or so the door would open again.

It doesn't, of course, and he sighs as he lets himself fall sideways with his head hitting the plush armrest, falling into dreams filled with confusion and reaching for something that was always just slightly out of reach.

In the morning, he wakes to sunlight streaming through the windows, and a notification of a missed call on his phone that had happened while he was sleeping, and he tells himself that he'll answer Tifa in person.

Genesis might not be dead, but his old apartment felt full of ghosts all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> _You're gone, gone, gone away,  
>  I watched you disappear  
> All that's left is a ghost of you  
> Now we're torn, torn, torn apart,  
> there's nothing we can do_


End file.
